VALUES— WHY ARE THEY IMPORTANT?

If that question, Why are values important? strikes you as redundant and self-evident, it should! After all, we define a value as “that which is important.” And yet the question is not only a legitimate question, but a deep question that cannot be answered quickly or superficially. Answering the question takes us into the heart of our psychological nature as human beings and takes us into the realm of ontology (being-ness). More pragmatically, it also takes a person into very personal questions such as, “What are you living for?” “What motivates you to devote your energy, effort, time, and money into X?”

Values, like most other things human, occur at multiple levels. At the lowest levels, we value the items that allow us to survive and feel safe—food, water, shelter, sleep, sex, exercise, money, etc. Answering the question as to why are they important is easy. These are the items that allow us to survive, thrive, feel good, and be ready to engage in the adventure of life. But why is that important? Ah, now we have moved up to the next logical level, we have self-reflexively considered the why of the first why.

Now that first area of values offers its own challenges. And primarily because those items are real, tangible, and empirical items. You can see them, hear them, feel them, smell them, and taste them. Unwittingly that has seduced most of us into thinking that “values” are externally real “things.” But they are not. You may value an item that you can see-hear-and-feel, but the actual value is intangible—living and feeling alive to life. Another seduction: You might over- value any one of these tangible things. You may semantically load it up with too many values and try to transform it into “the purpose of life.” Many people do that. They make food “the purpose of life,” or sex, or money, or just about anything that contributes to survival.

The next levels of values, using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, involve the things we value in others, in family, friends, and society. Maslow named them safety and security, love and affection, worth and dignity. The values in these levels arise because we are social beings and we need each other. In fact, all of the higher intelligent and pack animals also have these needs/ values. As a social group, they provide protection and stabilization, bonding and attachment, and worth and recognition. I love what Maslow said about that. “Be a good animal; have healthy appetites for these needs.” Yet in the end, you have only achieved the status of a good animal.

We value the needs of these social levels, even though they are less tangible, because with these, we not only survive, we thrive. Psychological research in the past hundred years have demonstrated repeatedly just how much we need stability (safety, security) in order to be psychologically healthy. If you are insecure in your world, you will tend to be on guard,

defensive, non-trusting, suspicious, paranoid, etc. Not good. If you do not have secure attachments with other people, you will lack the social closeness and bonding that makes you a good friend, a good parent, a good employee, a good leader. You will again, be defensive, over- sensitive to sleights, untrusting, feel like a victim, blame, etc. And if you do not have a sense of your social value and dignity in your groups and communities, you will never feel “good enough,” always feel that you have to do more, have more, be more in order to be okay.

So what we need, the requirements for physical and psychological well-being—these necessities are the first things that we value in life. This means that you and I have inside of us the intrinsic foundation for a set of values. That was one of Maslow’s major discoveries (more about that later in this series).

The final level in the hierarchy of needs are all lumped into one category—the self-actualizing needs. These are the things necessary for we humans to be fully human, to move beyond being a good animal, and being a good human. Here we have needs for knowledge and meaning, for beauty and order, for giving love and making a difference, for pursuing excellence and contributing, etc. You do not need these to survive, you don’t need these to be psychologically healthy—you need these to be inwardly healthy, or we may say, spiritually healthy—healthy in your spirit and heart.

Why do we need values? To survive, to thrive, and to become all that you can become, to unleash your highest potentials and live life to the full. Sounds pretty important to me and yet ... we have a value-crisis in today’s world, the subject of the next post.